The Obama Scrimmage Not An NCAA Violation

Brian Barbour on April 30th, 2008 |

5 comments - (Comments are closed)

It is a wonder more schools don’t commit violations.

An NCAA spokesman has stated that UNC did not violate NCAA rules by having Roy Williams watch the informal pickup game with Presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Under NCAA rules, Roy watching the players play outside of the season is not allowed(except for limited instructions periods) nor is any sort of “athletically related activities outside the playing season” during the exams.

The scrimmage on Tuesday morning obviously could be seen as running afoul of both rules. The NCAA has said this is “not an NCAA issue” and considered it a special situation. UNC has said Roy was aware of the rule but considering Obama was there and the Secret Service was present he saw fit to be there to make sure things went smoothly.

Even beyond that I would venture to say that the event itself does not happen except Obama wanted it to for obvious PR reasons. The intent of the rule is to prevent coaches from scrimmaging his team at will and in the case of exams to allow the athletes to focus on their tests. In this case, Roy watching his team in an informal pickup game with a 46 year old Presidential candidate participating hardly seems like anything that serves as an advantage to UNC and wouldn’t interacting with a man running for President fall right in with the educational aspects the NCAA is always focusing on?

The fact the NCAA dismissed it still won’t stop ABCers from getting their panties in a wad over this.

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Leann

April 30, 2008 at 12:45 pm

I think the “athletically related activities outside the playing season during exams” was actually no “mandatory” activities during exams. The article says that Coach told Eric Hoots to tell the players that they could attend if they wanted to, which says to me that it wasn’t mandatory.

I figure that as long as any other school who has a scrimmage with Senator Obama when he visits their school/city isn’t hit for a violation, then there shouldn’t be a problem.

But, yes, I’m bracing myself for the fallout from the “others.”

Josh Bowling

April 30, 2008 at 4:41 pm

I hope we don’t start measuring candidates based on how well or not they play sports. It would really surprise me if it was a violation for this event to occur. I would love it even more if this was Obama’s only school of choice to have events such as this.